The road to Independent Influencer
Transcript
alright thanks for joining the CTO visor LLC roll two independent influencers this is a career focused webinar so let's kick off by one painting this wonderful picture of what it's like to be an independent influencer I left my full-time job five months ago actually five months ago I think to today and [Music] since then I've visited Copenhagen on tech field days dime I've been to vmworld AWS reinvent I've appeared on the cube at both AWS reinvent in at VMworld the picture that you're seeing now is from dr.
e at VMware I don't really have an audience and I'm ready to become a paid independent influencer so I'll quit my job and start that it takes a while to build up to that point I was the virtualized geek for what three or four for at least four or five years I think then I was CTO advisor for another two years spent probably seven years building my audience building my brand wholly my skill running the CTO advisor as a side business for a couple of years before I took the note that dive into the CTO advisor now that I've taken the dive into the CTO advisor how do I keep it up how do I keep selling how do I ensure that I'm adding value that vendors and customers when I'm doing strategy work want to purchase first stop Europe always need to take the independent forever learning attitude don't stop learning just because you don't have a full time a full time gig doesn't mean that you can stop and you don't have a boss to directly report to and talk about how you felt improved or the need to interview etc you can never stop learning and this isn't like rocket science you need to ten training and trade shows you need to have a home lab you need to have certifications or you can use certifications that's if your audience is completely technical and you need you're providing like oh make sure that the cat6 is no longer than five meters long or you have these problems if that's your audience make sure your homing your skill in those areas don't stop learning because that's where your value is that you just because you no longer work for daily MC HP e IBM or GE in user organization doesn't mean that you know your responsibilities to learn technology in you got to keep adding value in areas that you earn value second one and we we pick one the Gartner's and I DC's of the world that you know what it seems like they rant this stuff in a book that they really never solved a business problem they they're not dynamic enough to know the pain points of when you install a v-max or a that you need to choose X options they just you know kind of gloss over those details and they start to lose a little credibility in my world the same is the case when when it comes to management challenges if I'm not actively helping a company solve a management problem then eventually my skillset and content becomes stale so even if you say that I'm going to sell to your content to a publisher a hundred percent of time you thought the model that work aka Pluralsight take the occasional consulting job Nigel does this he takes the occasional consulting job you know as technology moves forward you still need to stay relevant you can't constantly call on your bank of knowledge forever that bank runs dry so a consulting job is one act one way to bring in to refresh you know that bank of knowledge that you have another one is if your developer open source projects get involved you're staying in the community you're solving problems you're getting feedback open source is a great way to do that so good question for mark is without giving up the secret sauce what are your typical traits of your customer segment so mark I'm not a hundred percent sure on the question I have no problems giving up my secret sauce there's really no secret to doing any of this I'm not I don't know if you mean secret sauce as in NDA's that I have with customers or secret sauce and the value that I bring one of the great things about being an independent influencer is that you have to have the nerve to step out into ledge and jump off of the platform I'll tell people I'll be completely honest and tell people everything that I do you still got to have the nerve to do it so there's that and even if you do I welcome what is what I don't perceive as competition the more people doing this so more validates the business model and the more opportunity it creates in my opinion from trace and customers that I look for for my area influence I look for typical customers that I would have worked for as a full-time employee when I do management consulting gigs so fortune 500 large companies with complex legacy IT systems that are looking to move to a more hybrid environment are right in my wheelhouse that's the wheelhouse of my content that's the wheelhouse of my expertise that's the those other problems I have passions on on solving and that's where I focus my energies when someone reads my material they read it from the slant or consumer material they could read it or consume an understanding that the slant is from a large enterprise perspective and not an SMB or even commercial perspective pretty pretty I think salient point that you need to know your audience so with that we're gonna wrap up we saved a few minutes at the end for questions let's have open questions any topic that I didn't this is your opportunity to ask questions on material that I present it or material that didn't that you were hoping to get that I would touch on and and did you get a chance to talk about a couple of great resources that's helped me allow out a lot is the Content Marketing Institute economy this is the first time that you've heard the term content marketing concept Marketing Institute calm great podcast blog etc they edit the podcast this past year but they have 200 something episodes of great content talking about this concept of content marketing they mainly talk about it from the perspective of what in our world of vendor marketing but amazing content just understanding what's the Vout what value does our content have and how can we sell that to marketing departments insider vendors and then other one is a really getting like long in the tufa can't believe it long in the tooth I can't believe this is a four years old now but Howard Marks and Steven Fosgate joined the VMware communities podcast and talked about independent influencer life every now and again at least once a year I go back and listen to this podcast even now even after I started the company and yet get refreshers probably one of the most impactful impactful pieces of content I've ever heard so I think that ends it for questions guys if you got any questions DM me on Twitter is my DMS are open if you if you want to talk to me offline and get some mentorship or advice you know again just deep deep in me on Twitter I learn a lot from these conversations probably as much as you learn from me Tati guys next corner thanks
